peep: 0:00

This is an interview for Peep Magazine. We're here with the Bridge Lost Arts, the Bridge 4, and just happened to notice I'm here with the street artist, dan, and I was walking past and the artwork actually caught my eye and I was like, wow, I've never actually seen that done painted on walls. I'm here to ask Dan about his work, about his influences that forces him to do this work, and I'll wait till he has a drink. Hey, how you doing? Uh, thanks for giving us a time and chatting about your work hey, all right.

Dan: 0:35

Yeah, thank you for talking to us.

peep: 0:36

It'll be should be nice and fun it's kind of a mix of a renaissance style with a michelangelo and kind of rafael kind of vibe. There's a lot of different styles in there. Could you maybe talk a bit about it?

Dan: 0:51

um, well, like this kind of subject's like quite new to me. Obviously, I've only done this a couple of times and this would be like the third time I'm doing this kind of thing. I normally do pottery work, but I basically just use colors and fade them through and I don't really try to do everything without an outline, so it kind of lends itself to what I do. So it's been quite fun to like learn and explore. Have you got a background in fine art? No, no, I don't have any background in art. Really, I did a bit of like 3D animation at uni that wasn't involving any drawing, but I just found myself starting to draw in pain five years ago and I've been obsessed ever since.

peep: 1:28

Wow, you've got no background in fine art and you're drawing like this on walls. And, Mr Z, you do this freehand as well.

Dan: 1:39

Yeah, I started freehand, but now I start using a doodle grid to work faster and a bit more accurate than I did when I first started with the freehand. But now I start using it like a doodle grid to work faster and a bit more accurate than I did when I first started with the three-hand work.

peep: 1:48

Um, but I'm enjoying the process and learning how to get it better and better and refining it yeah, because I'm I'm quite interested about this grid work and I was I was asking just before I came on, so could you, could you explain the grid work, because I've never actually seen a street artist use the grid system.

Dan: 2:06

Yeah, well, when I went to London, I was quite influenced. When I went to London I've seen a lot of artists using the grid to do the work. Obviously, it's a lot more accurate and you can get likeliness a lot easier. You just kind of lay out the image over the grid that you've drawn on the wall. It makes things a lot easier and a lot quicker.

peep: 2:20

It's a lot simpler to do and I'm enjoying the process, to be fair, and I also do a lot of freehand stuff but when it comes to port rate work, I'll end up using a grid just for like, speed and effectiveness and then you also mentioned that I wouldn't say you're catching a lot of flack, but there's a lot of other graph artists or street artists, um, kind of turning their nose up at your grid, uh system, but I think it's absolutely brilliant. I mean, why would the? Why do you think they would do that?

Dan: 2:51

it's just a controversial subject in graffiti and street art in general and a lot of like older heads would say that it's cheating or but like any kind of technique other than using the can probably be classified as cheating and that same like spectrum of things, but it's just very controversial. You know what I mean like, but I'm very much of the mindset and anything to get ahead, anything to make my work look better and um, so you know like, success by any means necessary but you may maybe talk us through this, uh, particular piece now here um, who is it and what was the influence to do?

peep: 3:23

is this your, your style? Do you always do this style?

Dan: 3:26

No, no, this is just like I normally just pick. So I'm quite lazy in the sense of I just kind of pick a subject when I get here. This morning, I googled the statue heads and this is what came up and I liked the look of it, so I decided to go ahead with this one. I think it's based on Poseidon, so I'm probably going to do a few more of these types of things. I'm doing a portrait on Sunday, but further in the future I'll be exploring this more a bit as well.

peep: 3:50

Alright, so this is kind of like a Grif style kind of vibe going on, yeah.

Dan: 3:55

I just kind of like whatever I feel like at the time, I normally just Google a picture, or if I'm doing a portrait or if I'm doing a normal character, I can just kind of do it freehand, maybe off the top of my head, but something like this I'll just kind of Google a picture and then get a feel for the image and just use it and start.

peep: 4:11

As a kid, were you interested in illustration and drawings and stuff like this? You must have been.

Dan: 4:18

I enjoyed drawing as a kid yeah, Not like I ended up getting an F in school but it's not something I took seriously until like five years ago, when I needed that kind of like catholic energy in my life, I suppose. Like I needed that kind of thing to focus on, and it's been an obsession ever since.

peep: 4:36

Dan, thanks for chatting with me. I absolutely love the work. I've never, ever seen work like this on a wall, Not this accurate. The way you're doing the shadings, the shapes, the drift offs do you know what I mean? The tones, the depth. I've never, ever seen that before.

Dan: 4:59

Thank you so much. Thank you for interviewing us, talking to us, it's been fun, thank you ©.

San: 5:02

Transcript Emily Beynon.